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COMING back from your holiday should be straightforward – but for one British couple, a recent easyJet flight turned into a nightmare.

Olly Andrews, 36, and Lucy Andrews, 32, from South East London were less than 10 minutes into their flight from Amsterdam to London Luton Airport when disaster struck.

The couple had been in the Dutch capital for a four-day mini-break to see their best friend get married.

But just after taking off to return home to London, the couple heard something ominous.

Lucy said: “I heard a massive thud and I looked at Olly and I was like what was that?

“Not only that but the air stewardesses suddenly went quite quiet at the back.

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“We were in the back seats, so we could hear everything and people started looking around in confusion.

“Then we were flying really low – we were going over the sea and I could see the wind turbines looked really close up.

“I was like something’s wrong, why are we flying so low to the sea and something just felt off.”

There was then an overhead message from the pilot to say that the plane had been hit by a bird and that they needed to return to Amsterdam Airport.

Lucy added: “[The pilot] was quite calm and said there’s nothing to worry about.

Olly said: “The pilot said we’d hopefully be landing in 10 minutes – that actually turned out to be like 25 minutes.”

Lucy continued: “I’m quite a nervous flyer, so I was like ‘oh my god’.

“You know it must be pretty bad if we had to do an emergency landing back in Amsterdam.

“The captain said it was most likely a seagull we hit.”

Despite being told to stay put, when the plane landed a collection of curious passengers flooded to the front of the plane to find out what happened.

She said: “As we got off the plane we could see there was gore and blood splattered all over the cockpit window and blood smeared everywhere.

“The pilot wouldn’t have been able to see out properly – it was everywhere.”

It became clear that the bird had hit the windscreen and then also hit other parts of the plane as blood was splattered over the tail, Lucy explained.

After getting off of the plane, the couple spent the following two and a half hours in the airport waiting for the next available flight.

During this time, there were no easyJet reps or staff around and the couple kept checking for updates via the easyJet app.

“We could only see the Gate G section and Amsterdam is a silent airport, so they didn’t announce updates.

“There was one update, but we couldn’t hear it.

“We kept refreshing the app and we couldn’t see anything, but they were giving quite regular updates such as there weren’t any sandwiches on board.

“We just wanted to go home.

The update said: “We’re sorry that we won’t be able to offer you any sandwiches on your flight today.

“We’ll still have a selection of snacks as well as hot and cold drinks on board.”

EasyJet did give all passengers a £6 voucher for food and drink at the airport though.

They also received a message to explain what had happened, saying: “There has been an additional delay because the plane that was scheduled for your flight today experienced a bird strike.

“Because the issue could not be resolved, we’ve decided to arrange a new plane to fly you to your destination today.”

EasyJet had to then send a plane from London Luton to collect the passengers and crew – although Lucy said they nearly missed it.

She explained: “We wouldn’t have got on the plane if we hadn’t seen a passenger who we recognised heading towards a gate and asked if there had been an announcement, which they had been.”

The couple then had to run through the airport to make their flight.

Lucy added: “We were really scared for other passengers because we recognised one passenger who was asleep and we had to wake them up and be like you’ve got to go the flight is here.”

Directly next to Lucy and Olly, the seats were empty despite a couple sitting there in the previous flight.

It wasn’t clear if this couple made the flight or not.

“The app updates were quite poorly handled because we really should have been given like regular updates.

Looking back on the incident, Lucy added: “It was described by easyJet as a ‘exceptional circumstance’ which I agree with, it was a freak incident and not the fault of easyJet.

“It was the fact that the updates for the flight weren’t communicated with the passengers.

“They have an app which gives updates and they chose to send us a message apologising that there would not be sandwiches served to us on the flight, but failed to tell us when the next flight actually was.

“It left several passengers in the lobby not knowing that the plane was being boarded.”

EasyJet has been contacted for comment.

In other aviation news, here’s what business class is like on one of the world’s best airlines – but the pre-flight lounge is even better.

Plus, a budget airline is scrapping six routes from Europe – including a mega-cheap UK flight.

BRITAIN’S busiest station will be hit by a string of closures which will impact millions of passengers for the whole of next month.

Network Rail explained the closures will enable vital maintenance, renewals and repairs to be undertaken.

Rail bosses have revealed plans for an entire month’s worth of major disruption at Liverpool Street Station.

All routes and services to and from the station will be impacted by works throughout the month of March.

Liverpool Street’s mainline station along with its concourse will close for a total of five days but these will be spaced out throughout the month.

The closures will impact Elizabeth line, London Overground and National Rail services, including Greater Anglia and c2c.

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However, the closures are planned for the weekends only and should not affect week day journeys.

On March 15th the whole station will be closed and London overground services will run from London Fields.

There will therefore be no access to the main concourse. but the Elizabeth line services will be running.

On March 21-22, the Elizabeth line services will again be running, but again there will be no access to the main concourse as the station will be closed.

There will be no Overground Weaver line trains on both of these days and on March 22 there will be no Elizabeth line trains.

The whole station including the concourse will be closed once more during March 28-29 and there will be no Overground Weaver line trains on both days.

Although the Elizabeth line trains will continue to run – there will be no access to the station on those dates.

Last year it was confirmed that Liverpool Street is the busiest train station in the UK.

Some actors who appear right on the edge of becoming household names and who happen to be hosting “Saturday Night Live” for the first time might be leery of letting a famous relative steal their spotlight.

Alexander Skarsgård let it happen twice in the same “SNL” episode when his father Stellan Skarsgård appeared in a returning sketch about immigrant fathers (in which Cardi B also appeared) and one about a Scandinavian film’s giggly production. To be fair, though, his dad is currently Oscar-nominated in the supporting actor category for “Sentimental Value.”

If the Alexander of the Skarsgård was bothered, it sure didn’t show; the first-time host of the 1,000th episode of “SNL” was loose and committed throughout, even if not all the sketches hit. And yes, before you go racing to Peacock to confirm, Alexander gave his father Stellan a big ol’ hug in the closing goodbyes. Aww.

If “SNL” shied away last week from directly addressing the quickly devolving situation in Minneapolis last week, it found its footing with a cold open about ICE that didn’t rely on James Austin Johnson’s impression of President Trump. Instead, it featured former cast member Pete Davidson as border czar Tom Homan taking over command of clueless ICE officers. This was followed, after the monologue, by a well-executed sketch about a mom (Ashley Padilla) slowly changing her mind about the Trump administration.

Elsewhere, the guest host played a coach to a skittish Olympics luge athlete (Jane Wickline), a preteen girl with aggression issues, a Viking who feels like everyone is forming cliques during a bloody raid, a guy who uses Cards Against Humanity jokes to make himself seem funny, and Tarzan trying to get out of a relationship with Jane (Sarah Sherman).

As the younger Skarsgård’s career has shown (“Murderbot,” “True Blood,” “The Northman”), he’s used to playing odd, extreme characters and “SNL” was a nice fit.

Musical guests Cardi B performed “Bodega Baddie” and “ErrTime.” A tribute card for Catherine O’Hara, who died on Friday, was shown before the goodbyes. O’Hara hosted “SNL” in 1991 and 1992 and appeared in a short “SNL” film (with Laurie Metcalf!) in 1988.

For the first time in a while, Trump didn’t dominate the cold open of the show; instead, Davidson came back to the show, wearing a bald cap to portray Homan. Homan points out the irony that things have gotten so bad in Minneapolis with ICE that he’s now considered the voice-of-reason adult in the room. ICE commanders (Kenan Thompson, Andrew Dismukes, Johnson, Ben Marshall, Mikey Day and Jeremy Culhane) claimed their orders were “wildin’ out” and wondered if they’re supposed to be releasing the Epstein files. As Homan pointed out, the ICE raids were to distract from those, but now the Epstein files are being released to distract from ICE. Davidson is remembered more for his “Weekend Update” segments and his Chad character on “SNL,” but he does some nice work here even if he breaks character at one point.

Skarsgård’s could have spent his monologue discussing his TV and movie roles, like his upcoming film “Wicker” or his role in the new Charli XCX mockumentary “The Moment,” but instead he focused on the band members who appear on stage but rarely get to speak on the show. He interviewed some of the band members, poorly, and then grabbed a saxophone to do some inspired fake playing. It was silly and fun, a nice start to Skarsgård’s night.

Best sketch of the night: Mom’s having a change of heart, but you can’t say anything

For most of this season you can count on at least one sketch to feature a standout performance from featured player Ashley Padilla, who has become a ringer for playing women who are either very deluded and are trying to pretend they’re not, or who are trying to manage other people’s reactions to her odd behavior. For this sketch, she gets to do both, playing a mother who, after a lengthy preamble, reveals to her adult children and husband (Skarsgård) that she’s starting to change her opinion about Trump’s policies, from immigration to guns to trans people. As her kids struggle to hold back their reactions, lest she swing back the other way, her husband just wants to go to Red Robin for his birthday scoop. Best line: “If I hear a single ‘I told you so,’ I will go see the ‘Melania’ movie tonight!”

Also good: Having the right body shape for Olympics-level luge, even if it’s a corpse

Wickline, another featured player, has become a polarizing cast member among fans, some of whom simply don’t get her humor or appreciate her performances, while others love her quirky songs and see her as bringing a unique vibe to the show. For this Olympics-themed pre-taped piece, she gets to have a lot of fun as a reluctant luge competitor who is terrified to go down the mountain and tries to fake being sick to avoid going to Milan. This might remind you of Patti Harrison’s perfect performance in the “Capital Room” sketch on “I Think You Should Leave,” but Wickline manages to make the character her own.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: They scored again ahead of the Super Bowl

Sherman was promoted to “Weekend Update” weather correspondent in a segment that included a surprise appearance from “30 Rock” star Jack McBrayer, but it was Dismukes and Padilla as a couple who just had sex winning the week with their awkward, infatuated banter, which tied in nicely to a discussion about next week’s big game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. The couple predict that the Patriots will be on top the first half, but at some point the Seahawks will come from behind and dominate the Patriots for a little while. “Maybe the Patriots get tired and ask the Seahawks to play themselves for a while,” Dismukes suggests. Things go off the rails when he says no matter what happens, someone’s getting a ring, which puts tension on the budding relationship. “I didn’t say that night!” he explains to a disappointed Padilla. The two previously hooked up for the first time in the Glen Powell episode.

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.